Pale Lights

Chapter 51

Come night, Tratheke looked like a sea of lights.

Black House was not so tall that the view from the roof garden was not cut into by higher edifices still, but the spread offered to Song’s eyes was still a striking sight. The gas lamps of the capital lit up the dark like a thousand fireflies, their burning glow reflected on green glass and brass, and above it all towered the Collegium. That grand structure’s bones of brass were hard to make out from a distance, weaving the illusion that its massive transparent glass panes were instead made of pure light.

And atop that cube of light rested, like a slender crown, the palace that Song Ren was avoiding thinking about.

The bench beneath her was forged iron, digging enough into her back she was regretting declining the offer from the servants to bring up cushions. Perhaps it was for the best. Sitting alone in the dark surrounded only by grass, fragrant flowers and the sound of flowing water it would have been all too easy to fall into some sort of romantic melancholy. An iron ridge digging into her back detracted from the picturesque feeling, like a fly in the soup.

Pulling her black cloak tighter around her, Song’s swept the city’s skyline. Beautiful, she thought, but inherited. The sole claim the people of Tratheke had to this was that they had kept the lights on, tinkered replacements for the Antediluvian machines sucking gas out of the earth when they began breaking apart after the rough treatment of the First Empire. In Tianxia, such a thing would have been looked down on.

Her people’s pride was in what they built with their own hands, not the wonders bequeathed by long-dead titans. There was beauty in that as well, she thought. Not one so unearthly as this dream-city of glass and light, but no lesser for it.

Silver eyes flicked up to the palace above the city of lights, until she realized what she was doing and winced. Song was not a child; she had dallied before. With boys, as was her preference, though sometimes she suspected she was not entirely indifferent to the charms of women – merely discerning, as one should be in all things. Her mother had tacitly allowed it, almost encouraged it, so that Song would not be fooled by some seducer out in the world.

Yet her account book of some heated kissing and the one banal evening in bed had not felt like… that. How was it that a nothing haunted her more than the times she had actually indulged? It must be the denial, she told herself. Denial excited the mind, even when self-inflicted, and the mind was the better part of her troubles here anyway. Evander Palliades was easy enough on the eyes, but she liked his conversation more than his jawline.

Well. The jawline didn’t hurt, admittedly.

“Boo.”

The moment she felt breath against her ear Song’s hand lashed out, grabbing a collar, and after fastening her second grip in the same heartbeat she tossed her attacker forward over her shoulder and the back of the bench.

A second later the word and voice registered.

“Oh Gods,” Song said, hastily getting up. “Are you-”

“I’m fine,” Tristan painfully groaned, face in the dirt and hips well slammed into the back of the bench. “Ouch.”

She smoothed her face. It would not do to laugh, even though with his legs half-lifted and his face in the grass the Sacromontan looked like a manner of beached porpoise. His goddess showed no such restraint, the red-dressed beauty guffawing so strongly she almost fell to her feet and had to catch herself on the bench. Song eased her Mask past the edge of the bench, letting him drop belly down on the grass, and he did not refuse the hand she offered to help him up afterwards.

Tristan Abrascal brushed off his clothes and picked off a strand of grass that had stuck to his face.

“Well,” he coughed into his hand. “There goes my daily reminder of the virtues of humility.”

Song cleared her throat awkwardly.

“I did not recognize your voice until too late.”

“I’m the one who jumped you,” he snorted. “I was asking for it. Nice throw, though.”

“I could teach you if you’d like,” Song offered.

He was dressed for the city, in a belted brown tunic and trousers. In wool, which was common in these parts given how many Tratheke workshops made such cloth, and though his hair was bereft of a cap it was flattened in a way that implied he’d worn one for hours. Tristan was also, she noted, scrupulously clean from the fingernails to the shoes. He must have washed before coming here. Had he finally begun to notice the stink of cities? She’d thought Sacromonte had ruined his nose for life.

“Best to get my shooting up to par first,” Tristan ruefully said. “I would rather not split my attention when we already have so many plates to balance.”

Sensible enough. And the mention of plates led into an immediate curiosity of hers.

“Which begs the question,” she said, “of why you missed dinner.”

Late service should be finishing up around now, but he had missed the expected evening meal with Maryam. All trace of mirth left those gray eyes at her words, as if it had been suddenly squeezed out by some twitching grip.

“You should sit down,” Tristan said.

She did not, instead crossing her arms.

“What happened?” Song asked.

“The Kassa workshop is solidly guarded,” he said. “I could try to break in, but odds are it’ll be noticeable. The best shot for access is taking a job there.”

She nodded warily. He was circling around what he would rather avoid talking about, she could tell.

“To get that job I will need a recommendation, and to get that recommendation I will have to make a deal with a basileia the Kassa are friendly with,” he added. “Passing through the Brazen Chariot for an introduction seems the most feasible.”

“And you would pay in favors,” Song said. “In both cases.”

He nodded and she almost grimaced. A small favor to the Chariot for the introduction, then a larger one to the more powerful basileia for the good word. She would have preferred paying in coin, but since the misstep with the Brazen Chariot she had been educated on the difficulties of this. As a rule, most criminals were poor in actual coinage and had to pass through third parties to turn what valuable property they did own into something that could spend.

For a basileia to suddenly be flush with clean gold would draw much attention and speculation, something neither the Watch nor the basileias would want. And still she hesitated, because providing the services of a trained Mask to basileias was no small thing. An even halfway clever criminal could use his talents for a great many things best left undone.

“I’ll make it clear to the Chariot there are limits when they broker for me,” he told. “Nothing that can blow back on us too hard.”

She hesitated. Two months ago, the thought of letting Tristan Abrascal effectively freelance for criminals under the auspices of the Thirteenth Brigade would have had her writing a report to the garrison recommending his imprisonment. Yet things had… changed, since, in many ways. He knows what lines to cross and not, she reminded herself. An agent of the Krypteia could not be expected to operate under her gaze, that was simply not their purpose.

Tonight or some other day on the horizon, Song would have to extend this trust. Why shame herself by balking at giving it now?

“Keep me informed as much as you can,” she said. “I take it you will be leaving Black House?”

“I can’t risk the constant back and forth, someone might follow me,” he agreed. “I’ll pass reports through Hage regularly.”

“If it takes too long to infiltrate the warehouse, we may have to take another angle,” she told him. “Maryam’s experiment with the flowers at the shrine was inconclusive, but I have confirmed the existence of at least a second one.”

Maryam had not been able to reach beyond the brackstone to find out if there was resonance, which in a way was good news. The lack of answers had visibly irritated her Navigator, however, and yet another letter had been sent to Stheno’s Peak as a consequence. She wanted to know everything they did about the flowers, these Asphodel crowns.

“So the odds are good we’re looking at some old god slipping out of its cage,” Tristan muttered. “Bad timing for us, that. The priority is establishing if that cage and prisoner actually have anything to do with the Golden Ram, then. We might have stumbled into something much worse by accident.”

He frowned.

“And Brigadier Chilaca’s an ass, but he’s not wrong that between the noble plot and the aether lock we might have strayed away from our actual assignment.”

There had been no ‘might’ in the sentence the stern, older Izcalli used. But Brigadier Chilaca was the same man who had ordered Song not to warn their client about the coup brewing under his feet, most likely to use that as a bargaining chip in negotiations, so the Tianxi was disinclined to heed him any further than she must according to the rules of the Watch.

“I found no trace of the cult in the palace with my contract,” Song reminded him. “Considering the suspected membership, it is also rather unlikely the cult does not have some involvement in the planned coup.”

He grunted.

“I’m not unaware we’re running out of leads,” Tristan said. “I’d been hoping Maryam would find something more practical in the archives, but it has been all politics and old horrors. The Lord Rector really doesn’t know anything about the shrines?”

“There is reason to believe those secrets might have been swiped before the Palliades took the throne,” Song replied. “The finger is being pointed at House Eirenos – which was, it seems, once significantly wealthier in coin and land.”

“Bad news, that,” Tristan noted. “Empty coffers are when nobles start selling off the antiques they don’t show guests.”

Ah. She had not considered that, in truth, too pleased with the happenstance. If House Eirenos had sold land, it had very likely sold antiques as well. Hopefully not all of them. Tristan cocked an eyebrow.

“Does Tredegar know this?”

“I sent word after her,” Song said. “Under the guise of a lost hat being returned to her by her acquaintance ‘Lord Allazi’. The message is hidden inside the lining.”

Removing a letter from the word Allazei was not the most elaborate of deceptions, but then Angharad was no deep intriguer. Caution was the order of the day. Paying a messenger rider to take the package had been wincingly expensive, but it was the only way for it to reach her before she made it to the Eirenos estate – where it was not impossible her mail would be looked through.

“That should do,” he approved, rolling his shoulder, then changed tack. “I’ll be spending the night here, I think, and leave after our pistol practice tomorrow. Is Maryam still awake?"

“I believe so,” Song replied.

Neither had lit a lantern, she for lack of need and Tristan evidently finding the street lights sufficient, so calling his face shadowed would have been somewhat on the nose. Yet there was something, Song decided, to the cast of him right now. Tristan tended to geniality, or at least the show of it, but tonight it felt brittle. That look in his eyes earlier, when the laughter went out, it had not been the look of a man who had middling bad news to tell her. Despite his attempt to play it off that way, those eyes had not about the basileia business.

It had been too personal for that.

So when he inclined his head in goodbye and made to leave, Song cleared her throat.

“And if I were to ask what it is you aren’t telling me?”

He mastered his expression, but not quite quickly enough. Aware of the slip, the gray-eyed man grimaced and pivoted her way in more ways than one.

“Would you like to talk,” he replied, “about why you are sitting alone in the dark brooding?”

Song heard that, measured it. Headed it off at the pass.

“No,” she said. “But I will, if you do the same.” Rank meant little to him, there was no point in even mentioning it. Trying to force him would make her an enemy – she had not forgotten Maryam’s words – and set back their functioning relationship. But they had a degree of trust between them, now, so she figured he’d not wave away a trade if offered.

The two of them stood in the dark, her watching him watching her, and she could almost hear the creak of the balance’s scales as he weighed the risks. His hand twitched, almost reaching for his chest. Where he kept his watch when in uniform, the one the old clockmaker had given him on the Dominion.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“You first,” he finally got out.

Song cleared her throat. In her eagerness to seize the advantage she had not quite realized that she would, in fact, have to tell him her… troubles. Her reluctance only seemed to sharpen his interest.

“The Lord Rector forced his way onto the expedition to the brackstone shrine today,” she said.

He snorted.

“The Lord Rector of Asphodel fought to visit cheapest brothel in Tratheke? Now there’s the opening line for half a hundred jokes.”

She grunted in dismay.

“When we took a room there, to avoid revealing we had come solely to investigate the wall, we spent some time alone,” Song said, then swallowed. “He tried to kiss me.”

It was like watching a folding knife flick open, the change that came over him. Almost instant.

“Our contract is to the throne, not the man,” Tristan Abrascal mildly said. “It would not be too difficult to-”

Oh, oh. He thought that Evander had tried to… insist.

“Not like that,” Song hastily said, clearing her throat again. “He was mortified when I refused, apologized effusively.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“We can send Maryam to give the reports from now on,” Tristan suggested. “Or have her accompany you if you would prefer. That should discourage him trying his luck again.”

She watched the knife slowly fold back into place. As if he had not just offered to arrange the death of a king on her behalf.

“It is not on your head that he should delude himself of an interest,” he assured her. “Nor would we blame you if he grows miffed and attempts complications. That would speak of him, not you.”

It was very kind of him to say that, Song thought, which made it all infinitely worse.

“It is not entirely a delusion,” she miserably said.

A long moment of silence, Tristan studying her as if she were a five-legged dog or some manner of wingless bird.

“That is inconvenient,” he finally said. “I don’t suppose sleeping with him once would cure you?”

She might have been offended, if he had not spoken of sex in the same way one would speak of mopping a dirty floor. A vaguely disagreeable chore.

“You really have no interest in it, do you?” she asked, oddly relieved.

It was like confessing to her seasickness to a desert tribesman deeply skeptical of ponds.

“I sometimes like the kissing,” he shrugged, “but not the rest, no.”

“Besides being a wildly bad idea in several different ways, I assure you sleeping with Evander would not ‘cure ‘me,” Song sighed. “Or him. I think he is lonely, and that I represent an adventure in several ways.”

She paced back and forth before the bench, ignoring his eyes on her.

“And you fear… succumbing to the bad idea?” he tried. “Or that he will try to pursue you again? Your refusal seems like it would settle either matter.”

Only there were refusals and then there were refusals. Song was no great seductress, but she knew that much. She could have confronted the matter, but it to rest for good. Instead she had handed him the excuse of the wine, which they both knew to be false. It was leaving the door cracked open, however slightly.

“If he were not king of Asphodel, tangled up in everything we do here, I would have let him kiss me,” Song admitted.

He shrugged.

“Then let reports to the palace become Maryam’s responsibility,” he bluntly said. “And ask to have her along when you are dragged into serving as his sniffer.”

“That simple, is it?” Song snorted.

She felt almost foolish now. As if she had made a mountain of a molehill. She sat on the bench, iron digging into her back.

“I don’t think desire is simple at all,” Tristan quietly said. “I wouldn’t find it so tricky to understand if it were. But it seems to me that if you do not trust yourself, you should turn someone you do.”

Song passed a hand through her hair, pushing the braid back over her shoulder.

“I thought I was better than this,” she told him. “That I had better rule over myself. Gods, the things that would be said back home if the sole Ren who fled the Republics was found to have lain with a king-”

It was not merely the Yellow Earth that would vilify her for that. Even her family would hold her in disdain, her own sisters. That last thought had been what kept sense in her, at the brothel. The visceral fear of it.

“You aren’t going to impress anyone with virtue, Song,” Tristan said.

Her gaze turned to him, frowning.

“My conduct must be without reproach,” she told him. “Much rides on it.”

She must distinguish herself, in record and deed, so flawlessly that there was no choice but the Watch raising her. That even those who most cursed the name of Ren found nothing to complain of in her, when word of her actions reached the Republics.

“You’re waiting for a payoff that will never come,” the thief said. “Virtue’s what they expect of you even when they dine on gold plates and you drink from puddles. It’s the rule they put in place so when they live easy and you live hard they can say you broke some natural law and deserved the gutter all along. They don’t actually care, Song.”

Tristan shrugged.

“It’s why it’s always excused when they do it, when they cheat their cousins out of fortunes and assassinate their rivals. Because virtue’s never about virtue, it is about the power to allocate vice.”

“There is right and wrong, Tristan,” she flatly replied.

“Would it be wrong to sleep with Palliades, or disreputable?” he challenged.

That was… it didn’t matter.

“Reputation is a virtue,” Song insisted.

“Virtue’s not going to get your family name out of the pit,” Tristan retorted. “It makes people speak well of you at the burial, that’s all. I’d worry less about what people back in Tianxia might say and more about doing something that’s worth talking about.”

She clenched her fists.

“Are you truly encouraging me to sleep with the Lord Rector of Asphodel, Tristan?” she crisply asked.

Daring him to say as much, or withdraw.

“You roasted Tredegar, back on that first day at the palace,” Tristan said instead. “I don’t know what was said, but it was writ plain on her face. The way I see it, though, you two share an affliction: you spend so much time thinking about what others would decide for you that those same others end up making your choices for you.”

He smiled thinly.

“They don’t want you get out of the pit, Song,” he said. “They put you there in the first place. So maybe do what you need to do, instead of whatever that faceless tribunal allows you.”

“I do not need a dalliance, Tristan” she coldly said.

“Then don’t have one,” Tristan shrugged. “His hair looks stupid anyway.”

Coming from Tristan Abrascal of all men, that was absurd. And though Song wanted to chew him out, to lay out in great detail why he understood nothing of the stakes and needs of the years ahead of her, the more she went fishing for arrogance to rip out the more she found out he had not tried to tell her what to do. He interrogated her motives, not her actions.

And the truth was Song knew, deep down, that being a perfect daughter of Tianxia was not going to save her sisters. If she believed otherwise, she would not have enrolled in the Watch in the first place. She rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“You have a way with words, sometimes,” she finally said. “Allocating vice. Is it from something you read?”

He shook his head, then shrugged.

“You can only get stepped on so many times without getting a good look at the boot,” Tristan said. “Besides, I’ve known hundreds who thought the same thing I said. Only I was taught to talk, and they weren’t.”

“To talk,” Song repeated. “And to distract. I, however, was taught never to forget a bargain. What happened out in the city, Tristan?”

He had stayed up the whole time, barely moving on the grass, but now he went entirely still. Face blank, eyes considering her as he picked and chose what to tell her – what would get the reaction he wanted. That she would not allow.

“Good faith,” she said, “goes both ways.”

A twitch of the lips – it could have been a grin or a snarl, either way gone so quick she could not tell. A few seconds passed before he sighed.

“The abduction business, it’s not over,” Tristan said. “It followed me here.”

Song straightened in her seat.

“Students,” she slowly said, “are still trying to abduct you here on Asphodel?”

He curtly nodded.

“I eavesdropped on them discussing it.”

Song closed her eyes, breathing in. Still? Even after the fate of the Forty-Ninth, even on Asphodel, even when her brigade was hip deep in conspiracies that might well usher in a civil war that would kill dozens of thousands? A bleak, dark thing coursed through her veins.

“There is a degree of stupidity,” Song Ren calmly said, opening her eyes, “that can only be considered a capital offense.”

Her fingers clenched. She would certainly treat it as such.

“Who?”

Gray eyes searched her face.

“That’s it?” Tristan asked.

“I do not care for their reasons,” Song told him. “I don’t believe the Watch allows for final words during hangings either, but should they leave behind written explanation I might one day be moved to read them on a particularly boring afternoon.”

“Don’t be obtuse,” he bit out. “The last time I brought back-”

She breathed in sharply, the look on her face enough for him to let the sentence trail off. No, of course he would think that.

“I am sorry,” Song said.

He blinked.

“Pardon?”

“I now realize I never apologized for what I said that night,” Song said, ashamed it had taken so long to remember. “Blaming you for those hunting you.”

Tristan’s face was a blank mask.

“It is trouble I bring with me,” he said. “That is simple truth. They hunt no other in the Thirteenth.”

You were half ready to kill the Lord Rector of Asphodel for unwanted advances at me, she thought. Who was it, Tristan, that taught you everyone is worth the knife except for you?

“They are criminals,” Song said, simply and clearly.

He laughed.

“Well, that’s a new one,” Tristan admitted. “Song, they have contacts. Bylaws are nothing.”

“It does matter,” she replied. “You’re not wrong, when you say that power makes laws for its own sake. That rulers turn it to their own means. But that is not cunning or mastery, Tristan, not mortal hands handcrafting some divine right to rule.”

Her jaw clenched.

“It’s fear,” Song said. “Because there is right and wrong, and they may not always be clear or easy but there are times when evil’s face is bared and people say enough. When they push back, when the crowns of the world are remembered that no number of levees can truly hold the sea. They only hold until a storm makes the waves tall enough.”

She held his gaze.

“They are criminals,” Song said. “You are not. It matters.”

“Not if their friends are high up enough,” he said.

“And yet they hide,” she said. “Their friends hide. Because the Watch isn’t a handful of captain-generals and marshals, it is not cabals of monsters in secret rooms shaking hands. It is hundreds of thousands of men and women in black cloaks, and they do not approve of selling their own like cattle. That is the sea, and they know enough to cower from it.”

She gritted her teeth.

“Who?” she asked again.

“I do not know yet,” he said. “I have a brigade and two names, but there is another further up.”

Gray eyes unblinking.

“I killed a watchman tonight,” Tristan Abrascal said. “Lieutenant Apurva. Umuthi Society, part of the delegation.”

Studying her all the while, watching for her reaction. A test, like a cat dipping a paw in the water.

“Why?” she asked.

“He was their contact, an Ivory Library catspaw,” Tristan replied. “I knocked him out, then tortured him for answers.”

He leaned in.

“I mutilated him, cut his throat and dumped he and his clothes at the bottom of different canals.”

He spoke calmly and evenly, as if to make sure she would hear every syllable. Testing her still, as if they were again standing over a traitor in that room deep inside Scholomance. Bloody, ugly reality dying at her feet once more. Last time they stood here, she’d damned him for a decision she had all but forced on the two of them.

Song did not always learn from her mistakes, but that one she would.

“We will have to report as much when we are done cleaning up the traitors,” she said. “Given the circumstances, I expect punishment will be light.”

Tristan swallowed half a dozen replies in a heartbeat. Most of them sharp, she figured. The word that gave him pause was the first one she’d spoken. We. She would not abandon him, when the time came to answer for their actions. The Thirteenth would stand before the higher-ups as one.

“Who?” Song asked again, for the third time.

Gently.

And she got, in that moment, a look at what lay under the easy smiles and the wit. Under the hundred faces he knew how to put on. For a flicker of a second he looked furious, as if he wanted to strike her, then there was cold assessment – weighing odds, consequences – and then something… fear. And not for their enemies. The terror of an old soldier when the war ended and he realized he did not remember the last time he had put down his spear.

“Fuck,” Tristan Abrascal snarled.

She did not flinch and that, Song thought, was what tipped it over the edge.

“The Nineteenth,” he said. “Tozi seems the driving force. Coyac wants to back out, but he’s also the one who organized the grab after the terror room.”

So much for being better, Coyac. So it was to be Tozi Poloko, then.

Captain Tozi, who Song had believed she tricked when she pushed the other woman into taking the contract that would have the Nineteenth moving around the same city that Tristan was sure to wander alone on behalf of the Thirteenth. Captain Tozi, who had only yesterday mentioned in passing that when the other brigades were all gone from Black House theirs should take to dining together. Captain Tozi, who had begun playing Song long before they left for Asphodel.

Her jaw clenched. It was never a pleasant, realizing you had been the fool instead of the fooled.

“Do they have a ship?”

Tristan nodded, still hesitating heartbeat before he continued.

“The Grinning Madcap, at the Lordsport,” he said. “Apurva said they were getting impatient, that eventually they would have to leave. The other name is Sergeant Ledwaba, from the delegation escorts. Unlike him she’s an actual member.”

She hummed.

“You want to kill them,” Song plainly stated.

“I can’t handle someone good enough to cut it as a Watch escort, and poison would draw too much attention,” he replied. “Ledwaba is out of my reach.”

Who he did not mention was telling.

“We are no longer on Tolomontera,” Song said. “If even blackcloaks attempt to illegally abduct a member of the order, you would be entitled to defend yourself through violence.”

Poisoning them at dinner, however, would be harder to defend to their superiors. There was, however, one difficulty with that.

“If they try to grab me, I am done,” he flatly replied. “I’m not sure I could take Barboza and she is the least martial of the lot. Either I take them first or I end up in a sack.”

“The true prizes are the sergeant and the higher-up,” Song said. “With those in hand, we can prove to the Obscure Committee that another part of the Watch has been interfering in their backyard. That might well see this Ivory Library disbanded by the Conclave, pulling out the root of the problem.”

Although such a thing was likely to take months even with irrefutable proof in hand.

“I would settle for corpses, but if you can do better I will not argue,” Tristan said.

You already wrote the officers off, she thought. Too strong, too hard to reach.It’s the reaching hands you turned your gaze on.

“The Nineteenth-”

“Are too much of a threat to be left alone,” he flatly said.

She was not sure she agreed, but it was not Song Ren they intended to shove into a sack. Besides, Tristan was soon to be out of Black House and no matter what she said he would not change his mind about this. If she could not change that decision, she must work with it.

“I will memorize Tozi’s full contract and write it out for you,” Song said. “Hage should have it by the time you seek him out for your first report.”

A flicker of surprise. He nodded.

“It will take me time to find a way around Tozi’s contract, I expect,” Tristan said. “I am not sure how it would react to something like a two-part poison, or second degree peril.”

“With one man already dead, they will be suspicious for at least the next few days,” Song warned him. “You will not have two chances, and if you overplay your hand…”

“They might well turn the laws of the Watch against me instead,” he acknowledged. “I will not rush, Song. I will be as sure of success as I can before striking.”

Good, she thought. That gives me time to find the second traitor in the delegation. If she found proof, anything she could take to Brigadier Chilaca – or to someone else about the brigadier, a pleasant thought – then she would have a thread to pull that would unravel everything else. Tristan was not the sort of man to insist on killing the Nineteenth if the Watch had already removed them as a threat to him.

And a single corpse would be much easier to talk their way out of than five.

“You need to tell Maryam,” Song added. “Before you disappear into the city.”

He grimaced.

“She doesn’t have the guile, Song,” Tristan said. “She’ll look at them like she wants to hatchet their limbs, which after a suddenly disappeared handler is sure to tip them off.”

“I’ll keep her away from them until she’s cooled off,” Song said. “Have her replace me at the palace, as you so wisely suggested. By the time she returns it will pass as general surliness.”

Which, for all her grace in other aspects, she possessed in spades. Maryam Khaimov had the temper - and snores - of a fully grown bear. Tristan eyed her, sighing when he came to the conclusion she was not going to be moved on this. Accurately so.

“We don’t need to tell her what I just said, I don’t think,” Tristan suggested.

She eyed him amusedly.

“We are already two corpses deep into this relationship, Abrascal,” she said. “I think you can rely on my having some discretion, yes?”

Instead of the laugh she expected, she found Tristan staring at her silently. For a long moment, made uncomfortable by how unforeseen the reaction was. What had she said?

“I suppose I can, at that,” he softly said.

He nodded at her, almost smiling, and though it was but the slightest of movements she felt there a solemn weight to it.

“See you in the morning, captain.”

Song stood there, watching him leave, and wondered if he had ever called her captain before. No, it wouldn’t matter if he had. She could tell the difference now.

This was what the word sounded like, when he meant it.